| The mass media in the United States today is a powerful instrument of culture and its everyday social representations. Constructions of poverty in mainstream media serve a hegemonic process by blaming the victim. A content analysis of mainstream television news demonstrates that dialogues about poverty are distortions that conceptualize the poor as dispositionally flawed individuals. By racializing discussions of poverty, as a Black phenomenon, the news serves to protect conservative ideological interests. As Antonio Gramsci theorized, in order to maintain class positions, the mass public must construct, consent to and agree with ideologically based understandings that contribute to maintaining poverty and oppression. By exposing such hegemonic dynamics, the structural determinant of poverty can be addressed and revealed, thereby making solutions probable. |
